3 Duets

Puisqu’ici-bas tout âme Op.10 No.1

Pleurs d’or Op.72 (1896)

Tarentelle Op.10, No.2

By far the most successful Saint-Saëns pupil, and perhaps the greatest of all French song composers, was Gabriel Fauré. While the proportion of duets to solo songs is even smaller in his case (only three out of a hundred or so) Pleurs d’or is one of the most inspired examples of its kind - which must have been some consolation to the poet Albert Samain who had written a whole opera libretto for Fauré only to find that it caused the composer nothing but embarrassment. The duet, the second of Fauré’s four Samain settings, was written in London for the mezzo-soprano Camille Landi and the baritone David Bispham and, on its first performance at St James’s Hall in May 1896, its accompaniment was apparently enriched by a violin obbligato. Nothing of the violin part survives but Pleurs d’or needs neither that nor its original mezzo-baritone combination to register its falling tears and gently pealing bells, which are all in the piano part, and its unique atmosphere, which is in the daringly elusive harmonies. The dissonances between the two voices in the stanza beginning “Larmes des nuits étoilées” are probably all the more exquisite for being sung by soprano and mezzo.